‘This is outrageous!’
‘This is logical. Your keep has fallen. You require my assistance. I, however, do not require yours. Extracting you was merely a courtesy, and one that I extended with considerable risk. Had my Terminators not successfully teleported into your vaults and brought you clear, my squads would have lost their sergeants at a stroke.’
It was apparent the Space Wolf wasn’t listening. He was pacing in the snow like some caged animal, every distant howl and clash of steel still echoing from the keep attracting his gaze. Terrek had taken more than enough of the hot-tempered warrior’s foolishness.
‘Our fleet intercepted a transmission from this world’s moon, Svellgard,’ he said. ‘It seems the Wolves of your kinsman, Sven Bloodhowl, are also beset.’
Harald stopped his pacing and faced the Iron Hand once more.
‘The World Wolf’s Lair is under attack again?’
‘Yes. Seemingly with even greater force than before. As soon as we have dealt with the incursion here, my Clan Company and I will be bound for Svellgard. There are already other elements of the crusade fleet en-route.’
‘What crusade fleet?’
Terrek’s response formulae faltered, and he glanced at Arro. The Shadow Haunter Scout simply shrugged.
‘Wolf, we have much to discuss.’
The World Wolf’s Lair, Svellgard
Sven Bloodhowl no longer laughed as he killed. Now he did it with furious intent – not the primal rage of his Wulfen Murderpacks, but with the lock-jawed, stone-eyed determination of a warrior seeking vengeance.
Torvind was dead. When the Thunderhawk Godspear had taken them back to the World Wolf’s Lair, Sven had been able to see just how massive the new horde assailing it was. The sea around the missile control complex churned and foamed as ten thousand fanged and clawed nightmares dragged themselves up from the deeps, the wailing cacophony of their voices like a gale battering at the bunkers and redoubts from every side.
As Godspear banked round to land, the Wolf Lord had seen the first wave of the daemons’ new assault succeed. A cohort of red-scaled swordlings poured up the rocky knoll that dominated the southern tip of the island, flooding towards its fortified vox-mast like a rising, blood-soaked tide. From the open hold Sven had watched the stab of bolter fire and plasma beams as the Grey Hunters assigned to the mast’s defence – the Blackfangs – died to a Wolf.
Worse was to come. Emerging from the thrashing waters below came clanking monstrosities – twin Soul Grinders, climbing the craggy cliffs on segmented, arachnid-like mechanical limbs. From the knoll’s top their maw-cannons would have an unrestricted line of sight across the whole island.
Sven had led the counter-attack. He and his Bloodguard had dropped from Godspear’s hold as they had done innumerable times before, jump packs blazing, power weapons wreathed with disruptive energies. The Soul Grinders had broken and died, one shattered by Kregga Longtooth’s power fist, the other by Uuntir’s thunder hammer, the enraged daemons possessing the war engines dissipating into the ether.
But it was a trap.
More wyrdlings darted from the waters lashing the crag, these ones impossibly fast. On sleek, lithe-limbed mounts, the Slaaneshi seekers had scaled the rocks in a matter of heartbeats and were upon the Bloodguard before they could rally to their jarl.
Alone, the Space Wolves fought with their customary skill, strength and savagery. This time it would not be enough. Accompanying the mounted daemonettes came a soporific fogbank that rolled in off the sea. Purple-tinted and cloying, the unnatural miasma worked its way through their armour’s vents and numbed the Wolves’ razor-sharp senses, slowing each thrust and riposte, deadening each blow. Sven had found himself alone in the impenetrable fog, swinging Frostclaw at nothing, the ululating shrieks of the creatures darting around him making him shudder with strange, unnatural gratification.
He didn’t see Torvind fall, and perhaps that was for the best. Under such conditions, it could not have been a death befitting such a warrior. When the young Drakebanes powered into the mist with their own jump packs howling, banishing the vile wyrdcraft with fresh blades and bolters, Olaf had discovered Torvind lying prone at the foot of the vox-mast. His helmet was discarded and his white features frozen in an expression of wide-eyed joy, framed by his long red mane. The cut running across his throat, ear to ear, had been made with a blade so fine his flesh had closed shut after its passing, sealing in the blood. As Olaf, still dizzy from the daemonette’s wyrdling musk, probed the wound it had finally come jetting out. He realised the blow had cut the young Bloodguard’s throat right back to the bone.
The knoll could not be defended, that much was obvious. Sven, his Bloodguard and the few remaining Drakebanes had withdrawn to the island’s interior defences, and the Wolf Lord had ordered his Vindicators to turn their cannons on the vox-mast. A salvo of heavy siege shells had sent the rocks crashing into the sea, denying them as a vantage point for more daemonic artillery.
All that had only been the beginning. The daemons were relentless. From defence turrets and hardened bunkers, rockcrete redoubts and plasteel-plated bastions, Sven’s Bloodhowls gunned them down. Salvoes of bolts burst plaguebearers like oversized boils, or reduced swordlings to a red mist. Lascannon beams seared through clanking, whirring daemonic war machines while bolts of plasma vaporised flocks of undulating, manta-like sky-screamers as they swooped down with snapping maws. When the tide rose too high, the stink of promethium vied with the pervasive reek of the wyrdrealm as flamers burned the filth away. The odour of melting wyrdflesh was the worst thing Sven had ever smelled.
And it was all for nothing. On and on the daemons came, cohort after cohort pulling themselves, drenched, from the surrounding sea like some madman’s parody of accelerated evolutionary progress. It didn’t matter how many were banished back to the wyrdrealm. It didn’t matter how long it took them to gain the stony shingle, and then the cold, bare earth between the beach and the outer bunkers. All the spawn from a galaxy-spanning hell were flooding up through the three ever-widening rifts beneath Svellgard’s oceans. The Bloodhowls could have fought for millennia and not vanquished a fraction of their attackers.
‘Input the missile launch codes,’ Sven ordered Yngfor Stormsson, whose Firemaw Long Fangs occupied the keep at the heart of the Lair. ‘And rig the central silos for demolition. I am contacting the fleet. We are evacuating.’
‘Lord, communications have been intermittent since the vox-mast was felled,’ Yngfor reported. ‘And it will likely be another half hour before we can even begin to extract.’
‘Then we’d better start now,’ Sven growled. ‘I’ll hold them off.’
And so the jarl led his eighth sally of the day into the daemonic host. Frostclaw keened, reaping wyrdflesh with every stroke, neither warp-forged steel, leathery hide nor hardened scales any protection against its razor-ice edge. In his other fist the whirring teeth of Firefang glowed white-hot, a biting blur of fury that shrieked as it sawed through chitin and bone.
Sven killed mechanically now, the fires of his battle-song extinguished. Torvind’s death, and the deaths of all the others who had been dragged down beneath the maddening tide, counted for nothing. Svellgard was lost. The Firehowlers had failed.
‘Lord, communication from the fleet,’ said Yngfor over the vox. The rest of his words were lost on Sven as he was forced to duck the swipe of a beast of Nurgle’s meaty worm-maw, the flailing blow catching the top of his jump pack and causing him to stumble. He righted himself with a snarl and plunged Firefang into the pestilential monstrosity’s swollen belly, revving the chainsword violently. Reeking offal, chewed maggots and flayed meat battered at him, drenching him in toxic green sludge. He kept sawing until the beast had stopped squirming, up to his knee plates in eviscerated daemonic guts.
‘Repeat,’ he snapped into the vox. Then, suddenly, Yngfor’s message became irrelevant. He realised what the Long Fang had been trying to tell him.
Their salvation was at ha
nd.
Overhead, the blank, slate-grey skies were being inscribed with fiery contrails, like a hundred meteorites burning through Svellgard’s upper atmosphere. It was a sight he’d seen many times in over a century of warfare, and yet still it thrilled him. He prayed to the Allfather that there would never come a day when it did not.
Above him, an orbital assault was beginning.
‘Yngfor,’ he voxed. ‘Forget my last orders. All packs are to hold their ground. Help is on its way.’
The Void, Fenris System
The strike cruiser’s name was Star Drake, and its shipmaster was the youngest in the Space Wolves Chapter Fleet. He was called Ranulf, and he was a big-boned, blond-haired warrior who seemed ill at ease in the void, pacing around his bridge like a beast that had not been fed for days.
Captain Stern watched him without comment. The Grey Knight stood immobile beside the Wolf’s command throne, hands behind his back, waiting. They had left the upper orbit of Fenris less than an hour ago, Stern’s dozen remaining silver paladins occupying the cells reserved for the packs of Wolves that were the Star Drake’s usual cargo. Krom Dragongaze’s parting words echoed through Stern’s thoughts.
‘Ranulf will take you to the Rock,’ he had said. ‘He’s wasted above the Hearthworld, without any foe to face. He hungers for glory.’
‘I seek negotiation,’ Stern had cautioned. ‘Not battle or glory. The last thing we need is to give the Dark Angels any more reason to doubt the loyalty of you or your kin.’
‘He’s simply to transport you to the Rock,’ Krom had said. ‘Then he will join Egil Iron Wolf’s fleet above Midgardia. You are not responsible for him.’
For that, Stern was thankful. The Space Wolf hadn’t stopped moving since they had broken from orbit. He spoke only in grunts, not so much hostile towards his passenger as indifferent. The two other Wolves who commanded the ship’s serf crew seemed similarly distressed. One was overseeing the watch at the enginarium, whittling runes into a wooden token with single-minded intensity. The other stalked the ship’s lower decks, apparently without purpose, snarling at any who got too close.
Stern placed one gauntlet on the hilt of his sheathed nemesis force sword.
‘How is our progress, shipmaster?’ he asked.
Ranulf was down among the cogitator tiers of the bridge’s lower level, momentarily out of Stern’s line of sight. There was a long pause before the Wolf called back up to him, his voice sounding hoarse.
‘Tolerable, daemonhunter. Another three hours will see us within short-range hailing distance of the fleet around Midgardia.’
‘My Brotherhood appreciates your assistance in this matter,’ Stern said, wondering what the Wolf was doing.
‘Anything that lets us strike back at these treacherous fools,’ came the halting reply.
Stern wondered briefly whether Ranulf was referring to the daemons that infested the system, or his supposed brother Adeptus Astartes in the crusade fleet above Midgardia.
‘I will take my leave, for now,’ the Grey Knight said. ‘I must brief the Knights of my Brotherhood on the situation we might expect once we reach Midgardia.’
There was no reply. Stern turned to depart.
Below him Ranulf crouched, hidden between the cogitator banks, fists clenched, eyes screwed shut, his whole body shaking in mute strain. The kaerls around him stared at their lord in silent, wide-eyed terror, edging along their benches away from him.
Slowly, a growl began to build, deep within the Space Wolf’s chest.
Stern was halfway towards his commandeered cell when the inter-ship vox-net exploded.
At first it was just screaming. Stern’s sword was in his hand instantly, energy crackling up the blade.
‘Brothers, report,’ he demanded. All his Knights were still in their cell blocks. None were any more aware of what was happening than he was.
The screaming worsened. It was no longer just a single voice, and no longer just on one frequency. On three separate channels, the sounds of indiscernible Fenrisian pleas drowned out all other communication.
Stern checked the channel sources. The bridge, the enginarium, and sub-deck seventeen, deep in Star Drake’s bowls. Realisation struck him just as he heard the first feral snarls over the vox. His blood ran cold.
‘Artemis, Gideon, Ethold, deploy to the engine deck immediately,’ he ordered. ‘Simeon, Osbeth and Caldor, track vox-channel nine-eight-two-oh. Everyone else rendezvous on the bridge.’
‘What is it, brother-captain?’ Gideon asked. ‘I sense no warp taint here.’
‘You’re right,’ Stern said. ‘It’s worse.’
He sprinted for the bridge, bursting through the open blast doors just as a flood of screaming kaerls poured in the opposite direction. The leadmost scrambled to make way for the silver-armoured warrior as he thrust between them, eyes on the monster prowling the deck below.
The monster that had once been Shipmaster Ranulf.
The Space Wolf had succumbed to his kind’s inherent curse. The warrior’s armour was now split and twisted around fresh growths of muscle, his gauntlets broken by wicked claws. The shipmaster’s face was barely recognisable, a contorted mess of blond fur and fangs. Yellow, lupine eyes stared wildly up at Stern as he sensed the Grey Knight’s arrival.
‘It’s the Space Wolves,’ Caldor voxed as the other Knights made the same discovery. ‘They’ve gone berserk.’
‘Don’t kill them if you can help it,’ Stern said. He slowed as he reached the metal staircase leading from the upper half of the bridge to the lower, deactivating his force sword as he went.
‘Ranulf,’ he said to the Wulfen. ‘Do you remember me, Ranulf?’
The Wulfen snarled. It had killed. There was blood on its claws and matted in its beard.
‘I know you do not recognise my scent, Ranulf,’ Stern said, spreading his arms, opening his guard. ‘I am not one of your pack. But remember my voice. I am your cousin, Space Wolf.’ He halted a dozen yards from the Wulfen, the beast seemingly frozen to the spot.
A half-dozen kaerls, cowering beneath their clattering cogitators, chose that moment to run.
‘No!’ Stern barked at them, but too late. The thing that had been – or maybe still was – Shipmaster Ranulf leapt as they passed, a feral howl tearing from the monster’s throat. Two of the serfs went down beneath its claws, screaming. Blood splattered across their workstations.
Stern activated his sword once more and sprang forward, features set. Lowly Chapter thralls or not, he would not allow any more innocent Imperial blood to be shed.
Ranulf turned with a speed even the Grey Knights captain couldn’t match, claws slashing across his silver breastplate. Stern grunted at the impact, swinging his sword around as he sought to keep the Wulfen at bay. The beast, however, had no time for finesse. Ducking the swing, it wrapped two arms around Stern’s midriff and heaved. The Grey Knight found himself going down beneath the creature’s sweat-stinking weight, servos protesting.
The two Space Marines struck the decking grille with a crack. Stern immediately regretted trying to talk to the beast face to face and leaving his helm mag-locked to his belt. The Wulfen pinned his arms and tried to savage the Grey Knight’s skull with its fangs. Stern could only turn his head away, bloody drool splattering him.
Somewhere, a claxon began to wail. Red emergency lighting bathed the bridge. He felt the deck shift fractionally beneath them.
‘Brother-captain!’ The voice of Alacar, one of Stern’s brothers, caused the Wulfen’s head to snap up. Six Grey Knights occupied the upper bridge, force weapons activated, storm bolters levelled.
Stern used the opportunity the distraction afforded him. He head-butted the Wulfen. The creature grunted as its head snapped back, fangs crunching, its grip on Stern’s arms loosening a fraction. The Grey Knight ripped one gauntlet free and, as the Wulfen’s head came back down, eyes filled with raging madness, he pressed two fingers to the creature’s scalp.
‘Enough,’ he enunciated,
driving a spike of his will, blindingly bright, into the beast’s mind. His psychic soul flare illuminated more than he’d expected, more than just the animalism displayed by the creature’s behaviour. Fear, sorrow, pain. Above all, awareness, no matter how base. Whether he’d wanted to or not, Stern could not deny that the creature was still a Space Wolf. Ranulf was still there.
And Ranulf now slumped, suddenly limp, across Stern. He was unconscious.
The other Grey Knights reached his side. With some difficulty they dragged the sprawling Wulfen off their captain. Stern found his feet.
‘Brothers, report.’
‘The enginarium is secure,’ crackled Gideon’s voice in his ear. ‘But we had to put the Wolf down. Brother Ethold is wounded, and the engine systems themselves were damaged before we could purge the mutant.’
‘Ethold?’ Stern asked.
‘I’ll live,’ came the big Grey Knight’s response.
‘How bad is the damage to the engines?’ Stern glanced at the red lights still blinking across a slew of the bridge’s cogitator banks.
‘I don’t know, brother-captain. The mutant killed a number of tech-priests. The remainder are assessing the damage as we speak.’
‘Have them shut off those claxons,’ Stern ordered. ‘Caldor, status?’
‘Our Wolf is also dead, brother-captain. He threw himself from a stanchion when we cornered him. Some sort of madness gripped him.’
‘They are cursed,’ Alacar said beside him. ‘We should kill this one, before it awakes.’
‘That is not our decision to make,’ Stern said. He cast around the bridge, his genhanced senses picking out the hiding places of its surviving crew.
‘You,’ he snapped, pointing at an old man in the pelt-trimmed robes of a huscarl, trying to cower behind a holochart. ‘Where are this ship’s holding cells?’
‘Deck theta-nine, lord,’ the serf stammered. ‘That’s the main brig.’
‘You will lead my battle-brothers there with this prisoner, as soon as you have told me what this means.’ He gestured at the flashing rune banks of the nearest cogitators, and then at the wolf-headed claxon horns that still howled from the bridge’s arching roof.
Legacy of the Wulfen - David Annandale & Robbie MacNiven Page 23